People often will just follow you so that you follow them back, and then they’ll ditch and hope you don’t notice, leaving them with a bigger number of followers and you with a bigger number of followees.

There are a lot of tools out there that allow you to manage your profile and do a million and one special tasks to optimize your presence. I don’t use them. Mostly because I just run a personal account and don’t get too caught up in the particulars.

But I have been using one tool that does something I really value, and does it in a simple, hands-off manner that I don’t have to spend hours mucking with.

It’s called Qwitter, and all it does is send you an email every week notifying you of the people who un-followed you in the past 7 days. Simply run through your Qwitter page when you get the email and if you’re still following the people who ditched you, you can unfollow them. Easy-peasy.

Check it out!

]]> http://www.nickpierno.com/2012/05/keep-tabs-on-people-who-un-follow-you-on-twitter/feed/ 1 http://www.nickpierno.com/2012/04/get-a-bigger-composereply-box-in-gmail-when-using-chrome/ http://www.nickpierno.com/2012/04/get-a-bigger-composereply-box-in-gmail-when-using-chrome/#comments Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:30:49 +0000 Nick http://www.nickpierno.com/?p=5122 Are you ever annoyed by the teeny tiny height of Gmail’s compose/reply box? For all I love about Gmail, this is certainly something I don’t. Even when you use the “pop out” window, especially when on a smaller screen (like a laptop), you can’t seem to get a tall enough compose box to facilitate crafting those lengthier emails.

Well, this Chrome Extension does the trick. Download, enable, done.

Use it, love it.

FYI – I didn’t find this in the Google Extensions Store, but it is on Cnet and ChromeExtensions.org, so it should  be safe. Use at your own risk

No strong reaction? Good! You’ll be happy to know Google is rolling out the https protocol (as it did recently on Google.com) to the rest of the world. This increases the security of the web, or something…

If (not provided) does strike a cord however, then join me in a moment of silence for all search marketers around the world, who just lost another significant chunk of insight regarding the search terms that are bringing people to their websites.

I’m not mad, Google. Just a little sad is all.

Source: http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/03/bringing-more-secure-search-around.html

Several months ago we made a change to our default search experience on google.com — when you’re signed into Google, we add SSL encryption to increase the privacy and security of your web searches. The change encrypts your search queries and our search results page, which is particularly important when you’re using an open, unsecured Internet connection.

We’re now ready to expand this protection, so over the next few weeks we will begin introducing SSL search beyond google.com to our local domains around the globe. As before, we hope that these efforts to expand the use of SSL encryption in our services motivate other companies to adopt SSL more broadly.

Graphics (Vectors, Textures, Icons…)

Icon Finder – Free Icons

Not just a clever name. Find icons  for virtually every purpose you can imagine by searching this huge database of high quality icons and icon packs.

QVectors – Free Vector Illustrations

Great selection of vector images and illustrations. Vectors are pretty awesome.

Vecteezy – Free Vector Illustations

More great vectors to choose from. Yay vectors!

QTextures – Free Textures & Backgrounds

Tons of textures and background images for use on websites, overlays, and anything else you desire.

Graphic River – Graphics Market Place

Enormous selection of super high-quality graphics including vectors, icons, UI elements, print media templates… the list goes on and on. Way more affordable than some other stock art resources (starting at $1) and you support freelance artists who will love you forever

Colors & Hex Codes

Color Picker – Free Hex/Image Selector

There are other tools that do the job, but keep this super-light web  page bookmarked for when you need a quick hex code and you won’t regret it.

Kuler – Free Adobe Color Palette Tool

Great tool for inspiration and comparing/creating color palettes.

Fonts

Google Web Fonts – Free Web Fonts

Amazing selection of web-ready fonts for use on websites, web apps, etc. All hosted by the big G and much better than on-site font replacement for load times and SEO!

Da font – Massive Free Ttf Fonts Database

Frequently updated selection of fonts beyond your wildest dreams. And they’re all FREE! Great for use in Photoshop, word processors and so on. Type in some sample text and look through fonts using your words (awesome for logos)!

Urban Fonts – Also Massive Free Fonts Database

Just like Da Font, huge selection of free fonts. Arguably prettier interface for you design snobs.

What the Font – Free Font Discovery Tool

Find out what font is being used in an image file. Great for that client who had a logo or brochure designed, but has no idea what font was used!

Stock Photos

PhotoDune – Stock Photography Marketplace

Less middle man, more awesome photography. Better prices for the same quality as the bigger boys.

Big Stock – Affordable Stock Photography & Art

Another more-affordable-than-the-big-guys option. Well worth a look! Also offer vectors and illustrations, etc.

Shutterstock – Premium Stock Photography and Art

Usually my next resort after the previous two. Top quality, but a bit pricier.

iStockphoto – The other Premium Stock Photography & Art (usually most $$)

Vast selection, top quality, and generally the highest price tag.

Essentials

Sublime Text 2 – Free to try (indefinitely) Premium Code Editor for Mac/Windows

My text/code editor of choice. Dark background and color-coding is easy on the eyes and you can use it for free pretty much indefinitely (though it’s always nice to buy a license and support good software).

Text Pad – Free to try (indefinitely) Premium Code Editor for Windows

Another option for text & code editing. Windows only.

FileZilla – Free Open Source FTP Client

You need FileZilla. Plain and simple. This is the standard in FTP software.

Google Analytics – Free Google-powered Web Analytics Platform

The standard in Analytics. Get it. Use it.

Google Webmaster Tools – Free Webmaster Tools by Google

Your site, in Google’s eyes. See crawl errors, load times, rankings & impressions, and more. This and Analytics will give you all the most critical information on your website. Again, just use ‘em.

Content Management Systems

WordPress – Free Open Source Content Management System and Blogging Platform

New to content management? Want to learn how to build websites? Want to build your own company site? Want to build sites for clients? WordPress, wordpress, wordpress. Say it with me.

Everything I do starts with WordPress.

Drupal - Free Open Source Content Management System

Another great CMS, but unless you know exactly why you want Drupal – just use WordPress. Huge sites like The Onion and CNN use Drupal.

Joomla - Free Open Source Content Management System

Meh. It’s Joomla. Not great, but not bad. I might have recommended this 3 years ago. It’s still a decent CMS, it’s just a bit behind the times.

Search Engine Optimization

Raven Tools – Full Suite of SEO Tools – Free Trial, $99/mo

Pro level solution for tracking rankings , analytics, link building and all other online marketing efforts.

SEOmoz Pro – SEO Tools - Free Trial, $99/mo

The other pro level solution for monitoring your web marketing effort. In my opinion, not quite as succinct as Raven Tools, but their Open Site Explorer index is extremely useful.

Adwords Keyword Tool – Free Keyword Research Tool

The best free (or otherwise) resource for finding search volume and other phrases to target in your search engine optimization.

Open Site Explorer – Free (for basic use) Link Profile Checker

Amazing tool for seeing where your links are coming from, where you competitors links are coming from, how authoritative your domain is, and much more!

SEO SERP for Chrome – Free Chrome Extension for checking rankings

Find out where your site (or another site) ranks in various search engines and in various countries. Avoid seeing skewed results based on browser history.

SEO Site Tools for Chrome – Free Chrome Extension with Various SEO Tools

Handy little Chrome extension that will give a bunch of useful feedback on your site’s on-page optimization. I mostly like the at-a-glance PageRank number that overlays the icon in my browser. Great for quickly sizing up competitors!

All in one SEO for WordPress – Free Custom SEO Plugin for WordPress

I wanted to avoid listing WordPress plugins on this list, but if you’re doing SEO and using WordPress – this is a must have.

Quality Control

Pingdom – Free (for one domain) Uptime & Response Time Monitoring

Keep thorough tabs on uptime and response time. Get text message alerts if your site goes down  and keep an eye on load times in snazzy trending charts.

I LOVE this tool.

Web Page Analyzer – Free Page Size & Load Speed Calculator

Make sure your pages are all light and fluffy like clouds. For a better web.

Browsershots – Free Browser Cross-Compatibility Tool

Make sure your site doesn’t implode in IE5 :p Get screenshots of your site from a huge selection of browsers and their versions.

Templates, Themes & Scripts

Woo Themes – Free & Not Free WordPress Themes and Free Ecommerce System

Some people think these guys make the best WordPress Themes on the planet. I am inclined to agree with those people.

Theme Forest – Templates Marketplace for Everything

Quality templates for HTML/CSS, WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and much more. Very affordable and very good community setting to search for the best template for your needs!

Code Canyon – Marketplace for Scripts, Snippets & More

Huge selection of apps and scripts for innumerable purposes at extremely reasonable prices.

Simple Scripts – Free One-Click Installer for the 70 most popular scripts on the Web

Simple Scripts is amazing. Get one click access to all the most popular scripts and get your databases, login credentials, etc. set up in literally no time. If it takes me 15 minutes to set up WordPress on my server, it takes Simple Scripts 15 seconds to get it done. Not to mention the chat scripts, classifieds engines and more that would otherwise take me a couple hours to learn how to configure.

Pro Tip: If you use HostGator (and some other shared hosts) you have full access to Simple Scripts-esque programs in your Cpanel. Even fewer things to set up!!

Hosting & Domains

Host Gator – Highest Quality Super Affordable Shared Hosting

I talk a big game about Host Gator, but just because of the marvellous experience they’ve given me over the years. Awesome features, super affordable, 100% up time, unbelievable support & monthly billing are just a few reasons to go Gator.

Host Papa – Another High Quality Affordable Shared Host

Namecheap – Domain Registrar

There are a million registrars out there. These guys have a simple clean interface, they don’t push a bunch of extra crap on you and the price is right. Oh, and they don’t use scantily clad women for marketing…

Other Goodies

lil’qr – Free QR Code Generator

Quickly create QR codes using your desired URLs. Great for business cards or print materials!

Freshbooks – Free (for up to 3 clients) Invoicing System

The ultimate invoicing and payment processing service for freelancers. Super affordable (even free if you play your cards right), really well designed and fully white-label-able. Brand it, use it, GET MONAY!

Greesnhot – Free Screenshot Tool (Windows)

I use this tool every. freaking. day. I Used it about 50 times just now in this post too. Quick screen grabs of whatever you want, annotate, obfuscate, etc. copy to clipboard or save. Feel happy feelings.

At the very foundation of all SEO is your selection of words and phrases to target. Keyword research is vital in determining the ideal terms to try to rank on which will expose your site to the people looking for your specific product or service.

No matter how well your website ranks in search engines, if it’s not targeting the correct terms for your business – it won’t do much for you, and if you’re using pay per click advertising – it can cost you big!

There are widely varying degrees of keyword research; from simply looking at what your competition is targeting, to analyzing piles of data and hundreds of thousands of search queries to find exactly what is being searched, and by who (the latter being the type of keyword research we do at Top Draw – where I work).

The more time you spend on keyword research, and the more robust your data is, the more confident you can be in your optimization efforts. You also increase the chance of finding opportunities your competitors have neglected, which is a win waiting to happen. But every search campaign has to start somewhere, and before you invest hundreds of hours, or thousands of dollars, into your keyword research I recommend the following simple process.

Basic Keyword Research

1. Choose 5-10 words or phrases you think describe your business or website.

2. Visit the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (you’ll want to bookmark this).

This tool uses data from Google’s ad network to determine search frequency and competition, providing a general assessment for term popularity and existing competitors.

Another useful Google-based tool you can use is Google Trends. Trends will help you to guage the value of one phrase over another. This is especially useful for isolating search volumes from specific locations (ie. do people in Canada search using the word color or colour?)

3. Plug in your selected phrases, one per line, to the Word or phrase box.

If your terms are not directly related to eachother, it may make more sense to separate these and perform additional searches (Ex. pots, pans & cookware might go together where pots, spatulas & cooking oil might be separate). Also consider using specifications like cities and countries.

4. Enter the captcha words and press Search.

You will be served with several variations of your terms which can be sorted by clicking Global or Local monthly searches (these can be set using the Advanced Options & Filters).

5. Review your results.

When you see a highly searched term (though perhaps not the highest searched, if you’re in a competitive market), do a search for that exact term in Google to take a look at what you’re up against!

Visit the 1st and 2nd result in the SERP, and then maybe the 5th and 10th, getting a good sample of the sites that rank for the term on the first page.

6. Check your competition.

Assessing competition can be rather complex. For our purposes we are going to use Page Rank, but it is very important to note that Page Rank is NOT the end-all-be-all of ranking performance.

I repeat; do not interpret PR as your primary goal. It’s best used as a rudimentary analysis.

I repeat… Ok, I won’t. I think you get the point.

Page Rank provides a rough estimate of how strong a given page is in Google’s eyes, giving a score to each page out of 10 (10 being the best). It’s by no means a consistently reliable metric, but if two pages target the same term, and one has a PR of 6 and he other a PR of 2, the former is likely to win the higher ranking.

A few ways of checking PR for a page are by installing an SEO plugin in your web browser (I like SEO Site Tools for Chrome), or by simply visiting an online PR checker.

7. Rinse and repeat!

After going through these steps a few times, you will begin to see a general but useful overview of the highest searched terms and the level of competition if you choose to target them.

The goal is to assess what terms, of those most relevant to you, have the largest volume of people searching for them – with the least amount of competition in the rankings. If you find pages with very low page rank on the first page for a highly searched and relevant term, great! You may very well be able to simply create a page targeting that term (by using it in the copy and using it in the title tag) and get good rankings for that page within a few weeks, even days!

So that’s keyword research?

This process is not a substitute for serious data mining and keyword research, but it is a quick and easy way to get the basic scoop and evaluate the search landscape for your business. It should be sufficient to at least get a few ideas for phrases you hadn’t considered and to potentially reveal some low hanging fruit!

If you’d like to perform significantly more in-depth keyword research & optimization, drop me a line!

I can take a look at all the search queries performed in the last year surrounding your market and show you hundreds of the phrases people are using to seek out your products or services online right now!

Or, if you’d like to take it to the Agency level, talk to the good folks over at Top Draw! Tell ‘em Nick sent you

Thanks for reading!

Swatch

This remains the best free, business-ready WordPress theme I’ve seen to date. If you don’t want to spend any money, but want a premium theme, Swatch is probably your best bet.

Akita

HTML5 and CSS tableless design, responsive design for all screen resolution sizes, option to turn special stylesheet that targets tablets and mobile devices off or on, and an unbranded Theme Options Panel.

Olya

Olya is a colorful, versatile business portfolio theme, all the while its layout being completely responsive. It is packaged with an informative homepage template with loads of optional modules, as well as a custom team archive and contact page. A portfolio section is available to highlight noteworthy work.

New Business 3

Unlimited Color Skins
Unlimited Layouts
Valid HTML Code
Multicolumns Portfolio and Blog
Video Documentation

Buro

Buro is a beautiful business theme designed by Juanma Teixido with a responsive layout to display your website content optimally at all resolutions and browser widths, and on all media devices. A perfectly responsive building block for a web designer’s next project.

Config Multipurpose

ThemePunch’s debut WordPress theme release is a highly customizable, multipurpose theme that fits for various kinds of businesses.

Amongst a long list of features and capabilities, this theme has a custom admin panel (see screenshots in the features section of the item preview).

Empire

Empire is a multi-functional business theme with clean typography & coloring and subtle box shadow styling. It has a customizable slider, uniquely styled widget regions, a portfolio section for products or galleries, and a team page template.

Powered

Powered is a modern business and portfolio WordPress theme that serves as a simple yet powerful solution for all sorts of corporate/agency websites. Whether you are looking for a theme for a small business with just a few services or a larger business with many more services/projects, Powered is a good solution.

Statua

Statua is another theme designed by Chris Rowe which is aimed at photo enthusiasts who want to use WordPress to show off their photos and galleries in a stylish fashion. The theme makes use of JavaScript sliders and alternative layouts to make it easy to setup and customize.

DWA

DWA is a powerful business/corporate/portfolio & blog premium WordPress theme jam-packed with features.

DWA has 9 custom widgets, sortable portfolio and featured slider custom post types, full width featured slider, custom contact form, sitemap template, and much more.

Canvas

Canvas is one of my favorite themes in existence!

Every element of Canvas is highly customizable through our options panel, so you can make the design, layout and typography exactly like you want. If you are after a highly customizable blog design or just a starter theme for your next client project, then Canvas will most definitely work for you!

Veles

Powerful WordPress theme designed in a clean and minimalistic style. This Theme is very flexible, easy for customizing and well documented, approaches for personal and professional use. Based on 960 grid system with 24 columns. Follow me to be notified for future updates!

Simplicity

Simplicity is a business theme that is hugely customizable with a clean layout, featured home page slider, and custom post types for testimonials, portfolio items, mini-features and slides. Make this theme your own and completely configure your home page how you want.

This template is extremely intuitive and simple to set up, with lost of options to make WordPress bend to your will. Anyone can build an amazing Wiki in mere minutes, whether you have experience with WordPress or not!

The Reddit thread, titled GoDaddy supports SOPA, I’m transferring 51 domains & suggesting a move your domain day, is garnering some significant support of it’s own.

I’m currently a GoDaddy customer, but have never really felt great about the company as a whole. They are notorious for blasting users with up-sells every time they try to register a domain, they have incredibly junky interfaces and tools, their hosting service is terrible and they rely on sex and sleaze to drive their advertising. The owner, Bob Parsons, has also been called out numerous times for his extreme right wing ideals. He also faced down some elephant hunting controversy awhile back. All in all, I wish I had listened to my gut and kept away from GoDaddy, but their ubiquity led me (like many others) to overlook the discrepancy in values in favor of reliability and business longevity.

Silly us. I’m not looking forward to the chore of moving my 30 or so domains from GoDaddy to another registrar, but in light of current events – I think I’m going to have to grab my pitchfork and jump on the bandwagon.

The consensus around the web, and particularly in the aforementioned Reddit thread, is that Namecheap is the ideal alternative – with a solid history and lots of satisfied customers. After a look around, I’m inclined to agree with the consensus.